Youth, Trauma, and Contemporary Japanese Cinema

This chapter explores several vital intersections between depictions of youth and representations of trauma in three post'millennial films: Fukasaku Kinji's Battle Royale (2000), Aoyama Shinji's Eureka (2001), and Sono Sion's Himizu (2011). Through their formal and narrative structures, these films explore traumatic memory's complex dynamics, a gesture that requires audiences to rethink critically the very tenability of concepts like “self,” “other,” and “world.” The chapter investigates the vital and multifarious intersections between art and trauma in select works of contemporary Japanese cinema lensed during the last decade and a half. Bullying, a common practice in many cultures that privilege both hierarchy and community, can compound scholastic and social pressures, and it, too, is one of Fukasaku's major preoccupations in Battle Royale . Hope in the aftermath of traumatic events, and in the face of a seemingly despairing cultural climate, is exactly what Sono's film advocates.